Contents

Plot

After Ron and his fellow seniors hear an impassioned lecture about the Corps, Ron decides to
enlist. He misses his prom,
because he is unable to secure a date with his love interest,
Donna. He confronts her at the prom and has a dance with her on his
last night before leaving.

The film then moves to Kovic's second Vietnamtour in 1968. Now a Marine sergeant and on patrol, his
unit massacres a village of Vietnamese citizens, believing them
to be enemy combatants. During
the retreat, Kovic becomes disoriented and accidentally shoots one
of the new arrivals to his platoon, a younger Marine private first class, named Wilson. Despite
the frantic efforts of the Navy Corpsman present who try to save
him, Wilson later dies from his wounds, leaving a deep impression
on Kovic. Overwhelmed by guilt, Kovic appeals to his executive
officer (XO), who merely tells him to forget the incident. The
meeting has a negative effect on Ron, who is crushed at being
brushed off by his XO.

The platoon goes out on another hazardous patrol a few weeks
later. During a firefight, Kovic is critically wounded and trapped in a field
facing sure death, until a fellow Marine rescues him. Paralyzed from the
mid-chest down, he spends several months recovering at the BronxVeterans
Administrationhospital. The hospital living conditions are
deplorable: rats crawl freely on the
floors, the staff is generally apathetic to their patients' needs,
doctors visit the
patients infrequently, drug use that is rampant (among both the
staff and patients), and equipment is too old and ill-maintained to
be useful. He desperately tries to walk again with the use of crutches
and braces, despite repeated warnings
from his doctors. However, he soon suffers a bad fall that causes a
compound
fracture of his thighbone. The injury nearly robs him of his
leg, and he vehemently argues with the doctors who briefly consider
resorting to amputation.

Ron returns home, permanently in a wheelchair, with his leg intact. At home, he
begins to alienate his family and friends, complaining about
students staging anti-war
rallies across the country and burning the American flag. Though he
tries to maintain his dignity as a Marine, Ron gradually begins
to become disillusioned, feeling that his government has betrayed
him and his fellow Vietnam Veterans. In Ron's absence his
younger brother Tommy has already become staunchly anti-war,
leading to a rift between them. His highly religious mother also
seems unable to deal with Ron's new attitude as a resentful,
paralyzed veteran. His problems are as much psychological as they
are physical and he quickly becomes alcoholic and belligerent. During an Independence Dayparade, he shows signs of post-traumatic stress when firecrackers explode
and when a baby in the crowd starts crying. He
reunites with his old high school friend, Timmy Burns, who is also
a wounded veteran, and the two spend Ron's birthday sharing war
stories. Later, Ron goes to visit Donna at her college in Syracuse, New
York. The two reminisce and she asks him to attend a vigil for the victims of the Kent
State shootings. However, he cannot do so, because his chair
prevents him from getting very far on campus because of curbs and
stairways. He and Donna are separated after she and her fellow
students are captured and taken away by the police at her college
for demonstrating a protest against the Vietnam War.

Ron's disillusionment grows severe enough that he has an intense
fight with his mother after returning home drunk one night after
having a barroom confrontation with a World War II veteran who expresses no
sympathy to Ron. Ron travels to a small town in Mexico ("The Village of the Sun") that seems to
be a haven for paralyzed Vietnam veterans. He has his first sexual
experience with a prostitute he believes he's in love with.
Ron wants to ask her to marry him but when he sees her with another
customer, the realization of real love versus a mere physical
sexual experience sets in, and he decides against it. Hooking up
with another wheelchair-using veteran, Charlie, who is furious over
a prostitute mocking his lack of sexual function due to his severe
wounding in Vietnam, the two travel to what they believe will be a
friendlier village. After annoying their taxicab driver, they end
up stranded on the side of the road. They quarrel and fight,
knocking each other out of their wheelchairs. Eventually, they are
picked up by a man with a truck and eventually driven back to the
"Village of the Sun." On his way back to Long Island, Ron makes a
side trek to Georgia to visit the parents and family of Wilson, the
Marine he believes that he killed during his tour. He tells them
the real story about how their son died and confesses his guilt to
them. Wilson's widow, now the mother of the deceased Marine's
toddler son, admits that she cannot find it in her heart to forgive
him for killing her husband. Mr and Mrs. Wilson, however, are more
forgiving and even sympathetic to his predicament and suffering,
because Wilson's father fought in the Pacific Theater during World
War II and is disillusioned with the war in Vietnam. In spite of
the mixed reactions he receives, the confession seems to lift a
heavy weight from Ron's conscience.

Ron joins Vietnam Veterans Against
the War (VVAW) and travels to the 1972 Republican
National Convention in Miami. He and his
compatriots force their way into the convention hall
during Richard
Nixon's acceptance speech and cause a commotion that makes it
onto the national news. Ron himself tells a reporter about his
negative experiences in Vietnam and the VA hospital conditions. His
interview is cut short when guards eject him and his fellow vets
from the hall and attempt to turn them over to the police. They
manage to break free from the police, regroup, and charge the hall
again, though not so successfully this time. The film ends with
Kovic speaking at the 1976 Democratic
National Convention, shortly after the publication of his autobiography Born
on the Fourth of July.

Production

Oliver Stone, also a Vietnam veteran, read Ron Kovic's
autobiography: Born on the Fourth of
July and was stunned to learn what Ron Kovic had suffered
after being in the Vietnam War, bought the rights to the
autobiography, and wanted to make it into a film. After buying the
rights to the book, Stone had to find a distributor that would help
him do the film. Stone offered the project to Universal Pictures
and they accepted. After finding a distributor, Stone had to find a
producer for the film. Eventually, he along with another producer
became the producers of the film. Tom Cruise was cast as Ron Kovic for the
film while Stone directed the film. Stone met with real Ron Kovic
and told stories about their experience in Vietnam. After the
meeting, the real Ron Kovic decided to write the screenplay with
Oliver Stone, and appears in the film during the opening parade
sequence as a soldier who flinches at the sound of exploding
firecrackers—a reflex Cruise's Kovic will adopt himself later in
the film. Kovic, along with Stone received a Golden Globe for Best
Screenplay and where nominated for an Academy Award, despite losing
the Oscar to the screenplay of Driving Miss Daisy (which
subsequently beat Born on the Fourth of July on the award for Best
Picture)

Stone wanted to film the movie in Vietnam, but since the
relationship between Vietnam and the United States had not been
resolved, Stone decided instead to film it in the Philippines.
Other scenes which do not include combat, were filmed in the U.S.
The film grossed more than $100 million worldwide, significantly
surpassing its $14 million dollar budget. The film received
critical acclaimed reviews and went on to win two Academy Awards
for Editing and directing for Oliver Stone.

Reception

The reviews of the film were extremely positive. As of April 1,
1990, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 88% of
critics gave the film positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film
"four stars" and called it "One of the best films of the year".
Metacritic reported that the film had an average score of 75 out of
100. The New York Times says that "It is a film of enormous
visceral power with, in the central role, a performance by Tom
Cruise that defines everything that is best about the movie". Peter
Travers of the Rolling Stones says: " Stone has found Cruise the
ideal actor to anchor the movie with simplicity and strength.
Together they do more than show what happened to Kovic. Their
fervent, consistently gripping film shows and why is still urgently
matters." Many critics also praised Tom Cruise performance and
Oliver Stone direction of the film which he would later be awarded
with an Oscar and a Golden Globe for directing while Tom Cruise
awarded for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.

Notable critics who gave the film negative reviews include
Jonathan Rosenbaum, who said, "...the movie's conventional showbiz
finale, brimming with false uplift, implies that the traumas of
other mutilated and disillusioned Vietnam veterans can easily be
overcome if they write books and turn themselves into celebrities."
Hal Hinson of the Washington Post called the film "hysterical and
overbearing and alienating." Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times
wrote, "the director has lost the specificity that made "Platoon"
so electrifying. In its place he uses bombast, overkill,
bullying."

Themes

The most prominent theme of the film centers on the physical and
mental anguish Kovic suffers. He is robbed of his ability to walk,
a particularly vicious wound since he was an athlete in high
school. He is also unable to have "normal sex" due to his
paralysis, and can never have children.

The mental stress that Ron experiences, specifically post-traumatic stress disorder, is not
uncommon among Vietnam veterans. Along with his guilt over shooting
his fellow Marine, he must also come to terms with combat
situations that required him to kill not only North Vietnamese
soldiers but also innocent civilians. As we see during the July 4
birthday celebration the town veterans association holds for him,
he can't shake the reminders of combat, like the crying infant or
fireworks that sound like gunfire or hand grenades. It also shows
the pain he endures from the American government for not listening
to the veterans about the conditions in the hospitals.

More poignant, however, is the Kovic's transformation from an
idealistic youth willing to die for his country to a paralyzed
veteran who feels manipulated, lied to, and cheated by the American
government and people. The film covers this transformation by
focusing on events in Kovic's childhood that presented one possible
reality (that of American military virtue) to events in the Vietnam
War (murder of civilians by U.S. Soldiers) and his post War years
of disillusionment (reprimand from his countrymen) that represent a
completely different, and more vivid, reality.

Box
office

The film was released on December 22, 1989, grossing $172,021 at
its opening week. At its second week, it grossed $492,236. At its
third week of release it grossed $11,023,650, ranking #1 at the Box
Office. The film stayed at the #1 positions for its fourth and
fifth weeks of release. The film stayed in the #11 position of the
top ten grossing films of 1990 until its last week of release. The
film grossed $70,001,698 domestically and $161,001,698 worldwide.
The film was a box office success, surpassing its 14 million dollar
budget.

DVD

The film was released on VHS in 1990 and on DVD in 1998. The DVD
contains Commentary with Director Oliver Stone. The special edition
DVD was released on October 19th, 2004. The DVD contains Commentary
with Director Oliver Stone and The Original NBC Documentary the
Making of Born on the Fourth of July. In 2007, the film
was released on the HD-DVD format.